It is customary after surgery to place the perforate inner drainage end of a suction catheter inserted through the incision at a location inside the body of the patient where fluids tend to accumulate so that the fluids are drained by a light suction pump attached to the outer end of the catheter. These catheters are a conventional type usually extrusion molded of a plastic resin material. They are resilient, are of relatively small diameter, and are easily flexed. As a consequence, it sometimes is difficult to place the perforate inner end of the catheter drain precisely in the desired location. The usual practice is for the surgeon to clamp the end of the catheter with a hemostat, insert both through the incision to the desired place in the patient, then release the clamp and removes the hemostat leaving the drain in place. What happens all to often, however, is that there is insufficient room to fully disengage the hemostat from the catheter so that, when the hemostat is removed, the catheter comes out with the hemostat. This may happen repeatedly wasting valuable operating time. Since the surgeon usually cannot see the place where he intends to position the end of the catheter, he must rely on his sense of feel to place it precisely in the right location and this frequently is difficult to do because of the inherent physical characteristics of the catheter. The catheter also sometimes folds back upon itself and the perforated inner end does not always move in the direction in which the catheter is pushed so that, as a practical matter, it sometimes is not properly placed and as a result, the catheter does not do the job that it is intended to do.
The purpose of the present invention is to provide a device that can be detachable fastended to the catheter and that, when so attached, will support the latter for substantially the entire inserted length thereof and that is easily flexible and, in at least one form of the invention, readily deformable so that it can be formed in situ in accordance with the exigencies of the particular situation to permit the surgeon to place the perforated end of the catheter precisely in a desired location within the incision even though the location is remote from the incision or difficultly accessible.